The medal of the bald fuck

We called the Vice-Admiral Artamonov, our divisional
commander, Artemus or, more often, “General Kesha”. And
all because when checking the fulfilment of the military task
by the crew, he behaved like a true general: in other words,
like a lout, in other words, he poked his nose everywhere.

He loved giving orders and taking charge of the ship,
as well as interfering in everyone’s business, whether they
were navigators, radio operators, hydro-acoustic technicians,
helmsmen or holdsmen.

What’s more, he had so much energy that he managed
to ruin things for everyone, all at the same time.

And what do our beloved Naval Statutes say on this
particular topic? They say: “Don’t stick your nose into other
people’s business.”

But nobody’s tongue would stir to remind the admiral
tactfully about this rule, that is, tell him in so many words:
“Where do you think you’re going?”

Once, we went out to sea on an assignment with our
“General Kesha” onboard, and he gave us a real nightmare.
When Kesha started picking on the boatswain for the
umpteenth time, the vertical steering jammed and our nuclear
submarine – phased by all this nonsense – which had just
surfaced at that time began to chart out concentric circles in
the water to the great surprise of the fishing seiners, scattering
in all directions to dodge us, and the reconnaissance schooner
“Marianna” which was observing all this madness.

Then Kesha barked something to the holdsmen, making
them immediately re-set the mile-counter to a zero.

And, when every living being had witnessed the collapse
of the mile-counter, our navigator appeared on the main
deck – one estimable Alexander Alexandrovich Kudinov,
the greatest specialist who was known for his obstinacy.

Alexander Alexandrovich has the nickname “Long time
ago”. D’you remember that Hussar song: “Long time ago, lo-
ong… time… ago”? Well, our Alexander Alexandrovich – or
Al Alich for short – was “long time ago” in three ways: he
became captain third rank a long time ago, he became bald
a long time ago, and – a long time ago – he became chief
of the military navigation deck. Another similarity with the
hussars: when he was beside himself with anger, he would
grab at anything nearby and throw it at anyone who made him
mad, but since his subordinates never bothered him, and his
superiors did, he threw himself exclusively at his superiors.

He was such a hurricane that his superiors couldn’t
immediately comprehend what had hit them, and they only
comprehended it several days later when Al Alich was already
far away at sea.

On this occasion, he couldn’t find anything to throw but
he did find something to say:

“What the … (and after this, he said exactly twenty seven words most of which rhymed with “muck”. Which
words did he choose? Well, for example, truck, duck, luck…).

Everyone on the central deck had a “Masha swal lowed
the ball” expression, and then everyone on the central deck
remembered there was something they hadn’t yet done,
according to their schedule. General Kesha became purple,
jumped up and began shouting:

“Navigator! Have you gone off your head? How could
you? Just you wait…”

Unable to express the feelings, which had welled
in his angry chest, the divisional commander flew into the
navigator’s cabin, carrying along the navigator with him. The
door of the navigator’s cabin slammed shut, and all sorts of
sounds were then heard from within: a shriek, a squeal, the
stamping of feet, a crocodile’s howl and the noise of smashing
plates.

While precious crystal was being smashed and human
beings devoured alive in the navigator’s cabin, everyone on
the central deck were sensitively listening to the breakdown
of who-what-when-why-how. All this time, the boat was
sailing off wherever it wanted.

Finally, the door of the navigator’s cabin flew open.
The divisional commander darted out with eyes bulging like
a wild owl’s. While he flew into the commander’s post, a
thin backcombing of his hair tumbled off his head – it had
been painstakingly fashioned as a flat strand of metre-long
hair across the bald spot from the one place on the divisional
commander’s head: behind his left-ear. The backcombing
collapsed and the divisional commander’s hair flew after him,
fluttering in the air like the tail of a wild mare.

The divisional commander rushed to throw himself into his chair, squeaking with humiliation. His hair, calming down
now, hung from his left ear to the floor.

The navigator poked his head out of the door and
shouted after him:

“Bald Fuck!”

To which the divisional commander reacted just as
tersely:

“Bald yourself!”

Kesha-the-general was upset by this incident for a long
time. But it has to be said that, despite his looking like a
loutish peasant, he was not stripped of a certain dignity. When
Kudinov was presented with a medal and his papers turned up
on the divisional commander’s desk, at first he fussed about,
made a face, pretending not to remember who exactly this
Kudinov was, then he seemed to remember:

That medal never even reached the navy – it was nicked
somewhere above ground. So our navigator ended up without
a medal. But anyway sometime later, instead of a medal, by
way of consolation, the divisional commander removed an
earlier reprimand for “loutish behaviour towards a senior”,
and the whole story was called: “the reward of the Medal of
the Bald Fuck”.